Jane Chance Explained

Jane Chance (born 1945), also known as Jane Chance Nitzsche, is an American scholar specializing in medieval English literature, gender studies, and J. R. R. Tolkien. She spent most of her career at Rice University, where since her retirement she has been the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor Emerita in English.

Education

Chance earned her BA from Purdue University in 1967 and her MA (1968) and PhD (1971) from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[1]

Teaching

She taught at the University of Saskatchewan and then moved to Rice University in 1973 to teach Old English literature; she was the first woman appointed to a tenure-track position in the English department there.[2] [3] She was appointed to the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in 2008 and became emerita upon her retirement in 2011.[1] [2] She is founder president of the Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages.[3]

At Rice, Chance established what became the Medieval Studies Program; she headed the first Women's Studies program within the English department, which was nationally noted.[3] In the late 1980s she was the first president of the Rice Commission on Women.[2] [3] [4] She unsuccessfully sued the university for gender discrimination in 1988.[5] [6] [7] In 1995 she established and funded the Julia Mile Chance Prize for Excellence in Teaching, named for her mother, to honor women faculty members.[3]

Comparative literature and medievalism

As Jane Chance Nitzsche, Chance published a revised version of her dissertation as The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages in 1975.[8] Beginning in 1994, she published a three-volume history of medieval mythography. Volume 1, From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177, was termed "monumental" and "highly detailed" by Sarah Stanbury in Arthuriana who nonetheless found the focus on gender poorly supported;[9] although the reviewer in Speculum called it "disappointing";[3] [10] Volume 2, From the School of Chartres to the Court at Avignon, 1177–1350, was called "immensely learned and ambitious" in the same journal in 2002.[11] The final volume, The Emergence of Italian Humanism, 1321–1475, appeared in 2015, and was judged by one reviewer to be less comprehensive than claimed.[12] In 1995 she also published Mythographic Chaucer: the Fabulation of Sexual Politics.[2] [13]

Other works in which Chance focuses on medieval women and gender studies include Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (1986),[14] which investigated, among other things, the concept of women as peace-weavers[15] and their frequent failure,[16] and The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women (2007);[17] she edited Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (1996)[18] and Women Medievalists and the Academy (2005), which Helen Damico, writing in JEGP, called "massive in size and major in significance".[19]

Tolkien scholarship

Chance is a leading Tolkien scholar.[20] Her books in this field include (1979; revised edition 2001),[21] The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power (1992; revised edition 2001), in which she uses the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault,[22] [23] Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader (2004),[24] and Tolkien, Self and Other: "This Queer Creature" (2016), a biography with literary analysis.[25]

Honors and distinctions

Chance was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1980[26] and has also received membership in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.[13]

She won SCMLA Best Book awards for both the Medieval Mythography series and The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women.[2]

In 2013 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters from Purdue University[1] [2] [13] and honored in a symposium at the International Congress on Medieval Studies organized by the Medieval Foremothers' Society.[13]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Jane Chance, 1973–2011 . Rice University Department of English . December 16, 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161221022215/http://english.rice.edu/chance.aspx . December 21, 2016 . dead .
  2. Web site: Jane Chance . Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Rice University . December 16, 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161221022154/https://cswgs.rice.edu/chance/ . December 21, 2016 . dead .
  3. Jane Chance . 'Mine is Longer': Gender Difference and Female Authority in the Academy . Medieval Feminist Forum . 2000 . 30 . 1 . 16–23 . 10.17077/1536-8742.1298 . free .
  4. News: Joel Sendek . Female faculty assemble to investigate inequalities . The Rice Thresher . April 10, 1987 . 6 .
  5. News: Lisa Gray . Chance charges university with discrimination . The Rice Thresher . April 22, 1988 . 1 .
  6. News: Lorraine Snyder . Chance suit delayed, awaits new judge . . November 4, 1988 . 1 .
  7. News: Kraettli Epperson . Chance appeals discrimination decision . The Rice Thresher . November 8, 1991 . 6 .
  8. Review: The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages by Jane Chance Nitzsche . D. W. Robertson Jr. . D. W. Robertson Jr. . Comparative Literature . 28 . 3: Contemporary Criticism: Theory and Practice . Summer 1976 . 288 . 10.2307/1769227 . 1769227 .
  9. Sarah Stanbury . Review: Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433-1177 by JANE CHANCE . . Winter 1995 . 5 . 4 . 27869160 . 117–20 . 10.1353/art.1995.0011 . 161943734 .
  10. Review: Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177, by Jane Chance . Winthrop Wetherbee . . 72 . 1 . January 1997 . 125–27 . 10.2307/2865880 . 2865880 .
  11. Review: Medieval Mythography, 2: From the School of Chartres to the Court at Avignon, 1177–1350 by Jane Chance . John Block Friedman . Speculum . 77 . 4 . October 2002 . 1254–57 . 10.2307/3301233 . 3301233 .
  12. Carrie Beneš . Review: Chance, Jane. Medieval Mythography, Volume 3: The Emergence of Italian Humanism, 1321–1475 . . August 2015 .
  13. Web site: Jane Chance - Doctor of Letters . . May 2013 .
  14. Review: Woman as Hero in Old English Literature by Jane Chance . Hope Weissman . Speculum . 63 . 1 . January 1988 . 134–36 . 10.2307/2854337 . 2854337 .
  15. Book: Medieval Clothing and Textiles. Robin Netherton. Gale R. Owen-Crocker. Gale Owen-Crocker. Boydell & Brewer. 2006. 9781843831235. Textiles and Textile Imagery in the Exeter Book. Maren Clegg Hyer. 29–40.
  16. Book: Weaving Words and Binding Bodies: The Poetics of Human Experience in Old English Literature. 283. Megan Cavell . University of Toronto . 2016. 9781442637221.
  17. R. N. Swanson . Review: The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women. By Jane Chance . The Heythrop Journal . 10.1111/j.1468-2265.2011.00682_29.x . 52 . 5 . September 2011 . 856–57 . free .
  18. Review: Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages by Jane Chance . Clare A. Lees . . 97 . 1 . January 1998 . 105–07 . 27711611 .
  19. Review: Women Medievalists and the Academy by Jane Chance . Helen Damico . Helen Damico . The Journal of English and Germanic Philology . 107 . 2 . April 2008 . 245–48 . 10.2307/20722616 . 20722616 . 254485477 .
  20. Tolkien Criticism Today . Norbert Schürer . . November 13, 2015 .
  21. Review: Tolkien's Art: A 'Mythology for England' by Jane Chance Nitzsche . Edward R. Haymes . The South Central Bulletin . 40 . 1 . Spring 1980 . 23–24 . 10.2307/3187842 . 3187842 .
  22. Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power by Jane Chance . Robert Boenig . South Central Review . 10 . 1 . Spring 1993 . 102–03 . 10.2307/3190291 . 3190291 .
  23. Revised Editions of Tolkien Scholarship . Daniel J. Smitherman . Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature . 57 . 1 . 2003 . 109–11 . 10.2307/1348047 . 1348047 . 162473169 .
  24. Review: Tolkien and the Invention of Myth: A Reader by Jane Chance . Anthony B. Buccitelli . Western Folklore . 65 . 3 . Summer 2006 . 343–345 . 25474798 .
  25. Web site: Tolkien, Self and Other: "This Queer Creature" . Palgrave Macmillan .
  26. Web site: Jane Chance . . December 16, 2016 .

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